Arman

Arman (born Armand Pierre Fernandez) was a French-American artist born in Nice, France in 1928. Growing up with artistic parents, Arman was naturally inspired and later influenced by Vincent Van Gogh, who he studied at the École du Louvre. Starting out in Surrealist painting, Arman later directed his attention to sculpting where he adopted his artist name after a printer’s misspelling. Arman and company founded the Nouveau Realist movement in 1960 who believed in accomplishing “new perspective approaches of reality”. The group highlighted many themes of which include high humanism in their work to stand out from the industrial and consumerist driven society that was rapidly growing. Arman made his first American show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City titled The Art of Assemblage. After 1961, Arman began to explore the relationship between creation and destruction and from this have created works with items such as: musical instruments, bicycles, cars, and smashed objects. Arman has also created large public monumental installations. Arman’s work has been showcased around the world in many institutions including the Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou. Arman died in 2005 in New York City.